CAMDEN - Opponents of a planned drug-treatment clinic in a city neighborhood have agreed to settle a lawsuit that sought to block the controversial project.

“They can build it now, sadly,” said Michael Landis, executive director of The Neighborhood Center in Camden, one of two nonprofits that fiercely fought the project.

The settlement, approved by Camden City Council at its meeting Tuesday, would impose strict requirements on the planned clinic at 6th Street and Atlantic Avenue in the Bergen Square area.

It also would require Camden County Police Department to address security concerns in the neighborhood, while county freeholders would provide financial assistance to The Neighborhood Center and its ally in the fight, Joseph's House of Camden.

"We addressed quality and we addressed community safety," John Klein, executive director of Joseph's House, said Wednesday.

"Our thought was, if we have to have this, how can we make it the very best quality," said Klein, whose organization operates on the 500 block of Atlantic Avenue.

Still, Landis said, "I'm not celebrating at all."

"This was really stacked up against our neighborhood," he asserted of the project.

The clinic currently occupies a converted drugstore at 5th and Market streets in the city’s fast-developing downtown. It is moving to make way for a new home for Rutgers School of Business-Camden.

The nonprofits' lawsuit, filed in Superior Court, Camden, challenged the Camden zoning board's determination that the methadone clinic could rise on a vacant lot.

The board reached that decision last April, after the panel's attorney warned it could face a discrimination lawsuit if it tried to block construction of the 17,000-square-foot healthcare facility.

Camden's planning board advanced the proposal in November after a six-hour meeting that drew a large crowd of angry opponents.

Edward Sheehan, a Camden attorney representing the clinic's owners, could not be reached for immediate comment Wednesday.

Among other measures, the settlement calls for the clinic's owner, Camden Recovery Holdings LLC, to create an advisory committee "with representation" from the facility's neighbors. It also is to hold twice-a-year "educational/informational sessions" for residents and public officials.

The clinic also is to upgrade the area around its facility with trees and decorative lights.

The 10-year agreement would require police "to assure that no patients of the clinic are unlawfully wandering or loitering in the neighborhood or engaging in any unlawful actions."

Police also are to conduct a pedestrian-safety study on heavily traveled streets near the clinic, to install surveillance cameras and to consider "the efficacy" of building a substation or deploying a mobile unit in the area.

In addition, county freeholders are to provide an annual grant of $200,000 for two years that would be shared equally by the nonprofits.

Joseph's House would to use its funding to serve the homeless. The Neighborhood Center, on the 200 block of Kaighns Avenue, would provide youth programs "in art, athletics and academics."

The county also is to consider "grant applications for established programs to social service providers … and other budget line items to assist in the development of that neighborhood."

Freeholders are expected to vote on settlement agreement at their April meeting, said county spokesman Dan Keashen.

“In principal this settlement provides a roadmap to ensure the preservation of the integrity of the Bergen Square neighborhood through additional police resources and grant allocations supporting two nonprofits working for the betterment of the community," he said.

The measure also sets "hard standards and boundaries to meet the neighborhood’s expectation of the operation of this facility," Keashen added.